


Badland Blues

by Raicho Kurubi (SphinxTheRiddle)



Category: Fallout 3
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Flash Fic, Fluff and Angst, Romance, and all the sap commences, in which mister burke and the lone wanderer finally find their way to each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 18:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7651705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SphinxTheRiddle/pseuds/Raicho%20Kurubi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is the phantom splatter of color in a world of perpetual gray, faded like a pre-war oil pastel, and yet the richness is never lost. She encompasses the entirety of his senses even as a shade of memory, carrying the faint hint of Wasteland dust and old world lilacs. She is a magnificent creature.<br/><br/>She is also supposed to be dead.<br/><br/>Mister Burke x The Lone Wanderer</p>
            </blockquote>





	Badland Blues

**Author's Note:**

> This was written several years ago while I was feeling incredibly sappy and a friend was pushing all the Burke feels on me. I kept thinking about what would happen if my main LW ever came back to him, and y'know, OTP done did what an OTP does.  
>   
> tl;dr Please forgive the extremely self-indulgent sap? ~~I'm mature enough to admit I'm not sorry at all lolol~~  
> 

_“Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts,_  
_but when I think of you another shower starts.”_  
-The Ink Spots, **Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall**

When he sees her, the world stops spinning.

The oxygen goes rushing from his lungs and the dizziness starts. The pale gray light of an early morn shrouded in a misty haze of rain flashes mutedly off of his sunglasses as she opens the door to the bar. He finds that the humidity is suddenly more intense and he cannot breathe for the thought that this could all be a dream. For she has haunted the dull monochrome of is dreaming mind countless times, her essence a vivid kaleidoscope of flashing hues and soul. In those fleeting fantasies, she is the phantom splatter of color in a world of perpetual gray, faded like a pre-war oil pastel, and yet the richness is never lost. She encompasses the entirety of his senses even as a shade of memory, carrying the faint hint of Wasteland dust and old world lilacs. She is a magnificent creature.

She is also supposed to be dead.

“You… This is…unexpected,” he admits with equal parts wonder and incredulity.

“Yes, I imagine so,” she replies. “I’m…just as surprised to see you.”

She is guarded and hesitant, gazing at him with eyes of a much wiser shade than that of when she first met him all those years ago. He can see the signs of age tracing a fine web of lines along the creases of her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Nigh on a decade of wandering the sun-scorched expanse of the Capital Wasteland has bronzed her once pale skin and left a dotted trail of sunburn-induced freckles along her arms and the bridge of her nose. She has lost all of the fragile, doll-like attractiveness that had captivated him before. She no longer seems like a relic out of the past, like the demure and domesticated women of pre-war America with the perfectly coiffed hair and exquisitely tailored dresses showing nary a wrinkle. She is not the image of the young, sophisticated, kept woman he had spent so many moments imagining in his suite, in his bed, in his possession.

No, she is the now the very image of a wild and rugged wanderer, with the sort of earthy, erotic beauty one imagines when they indulge the more primal nature of man. She inspires not the fantasies of high societal living and a maiden draped in the trappings of exorbitant, gluttonous wealth. Rather, she calls out the untamed thrill of the hunt, the pounding of blood pulsing hot and thick in his veins like an animal in rut. He would still possess her if he could, not as a doll to pose and train to his liking, but as a challenge, an equal.

And it must somehow show on his face for the smile she offers has a wry little twist at the corners. He can feel the same expression form on his own lips as they each bask in a bit of self-mockery. For here they are, back in Megaton, back in Moriarty’s Saloon, back at the beginning of all things. Twenty-five years have come and gone between them, but still they are connected somehow, some way. And though she is closing in on her forty-sixth year, and he his eighty-first, they both seem no different to each other than when they first met. Oh, there is gray streaking from her temples and weariness in her eyes; his hair has thinned and whitened, and his face is deeply lined— but these small, physical things are of no matter to people who have seen the ravages of time in a post-apocalyptic world. They know how fragile beauty is, how fleeting life can be.

And it is because of this age-born wisdom that she speaks to him so candidly.

“I have missed you,” she confesses. “It’s never mattered where I go or who I’m with— the ache has always remained.”

He has no answer for her honesty, and of course, she understands.

“I’ve kept your letters,” she goes on, her eyes glossing over with memory. “All these years later and still I keep them close like a lovesick belle fawning over her first beau.”

Even in his twilight years, Burke still has the ego of a man over half his age. His smirk is indulgent, knowing. There is keenness to his gaze and she thinks she knows his thoughts, which only compounds the longing ache with a twinge of guilt.

She stares back at him. Her eyes are somber, reflective, and filled with a marrow-deep expression of utmost affection. She can see his reaction clear as crystal, and she knows for certain that her hunch was true.

“Do you remember that night at the Tower?” she whispers. “You coaxed me into the suite, into your bed. I have never experienced a night such as that again. I have never connected with anyone so deeply as you on that night.” She tilts her head so that their faces are aligned and she stares beyond the dark tint of his sunglasses, pointedly into his darkening brown eyes. “I have never been loved so passionately by any other such as you.”

He reacts much as she suspected he would, with a gritting of teeth and the clenching of his fists. Beneath the empty expression, beneath the cool composure is a man livid with reopened wounds— wounds that she herself inflicted. He fights with the impulsive rush of temper and breathes deeply from the cigarette in hand.

“I remember.” His voice is clipped. “Oh yes, my dear. I remember the night with perfect clarity. I also remember an exchange of words and promises to be broken. You swore you would never seek me out again. I swore you would waste your life on a fool’s mission to satisfy your poor, bleeding heart.” He smiles darkly, “It would seem that one of us has indeed gone back on their word. But then, that is not so unusual.”

The quiet venom in his tone is like a brand on her heart, but she allows him his bitterness. He is right, after all. Finding him again is not the first promise she has broken

But she wants it to be the last.

:You want me to apologize,” she says. “You want me to validate your view on our sorry affair, but I can’t. I don’t agree. Too much of myself has been scattered across these Wastes, too many people have needed me, too many have been impacted by the choices I have made. Of whom much has been given, much is required. That is what my father taught me. I can’t be anymore than what I am.

“Perhaps I have wasted my youth and my best days on the people of this country. I suppose I will never truly know. But darling”—her voice chokes with feeling and her eyes line with unshed tears—“Darling, I have always loved you. And there are moments when I regret not staying with you. I regret leaving behind a life of warmth, and comfort, and security. But I know that I was not made to be what you wanted me to be. I was not made to be a kept woman, to wait on a man at his leisure, or to bite my tongue and swallow my pride when I damn well know that I can take care of myself. You didn’t want an equal—no, don’t deny it—you wanted a doll. You wanted someone sweet and pliable, with soft curves and perfect hair. And these things are not me. They may be part of me, but they do not define me.”

She swallows the rushing of more words than she will ever admit. “I love you,” she breathes. “That counts for something.”

Burke finds that he can only stare. His mind is empty, almost still, but a din of emotion rings in his ears. He feels the torrent rise in his chest, hammering a brand against his ribcage as he stares and stares. It is as if time, once stopped, has suddenly sped forward on a collision course with memory, blurring the lines between past and present, then and now. For certainly, the day seems so familiar, the look in her aged eyes is a mirror of what they were the first time they clashed with his, and the sensation, equal parts anguish and euphoria, are as pronounced as the caressing scent of lilacs.

He has never felt anything as desperately as what he feels now. His hands are reaching for her before he can think to stop himself. She is on his lap and in his arms in the blink of an eye, and her chapped lips are warm and reassuring, even as his softer ones are firm and demanding. He knows now that he will never let her walk away again. Pride had checked his search for her years ago, but he is an old man—ancient even, by the Wasteland’s standards—and they have so little time left together. She herself is not long for this world; he can feel the telltale lumps indicative of cancer along her back. He damns the Brotherhood and her father at the feel of them, knowing that it must have been caused by the ungodly amount of radiation she encountered by finishing Project Purity. Certainly, he’d thought her dead because of exposure, and by all rights, she should be. And she must know that she is dying, for he can taste salt in their kiss and knows then that she is weeping.

He parts to look at her, his eyes familiarizing every crease, every line, every wrinkle. Somehow, he knows she will go before him and the notion tears at his heart.

“Come back with me,” he murmurs. “You will want for nothing. And I’m not so feeble that it is impossible to care for you.”

She finds that she can only smile tremulously. “Alright,” she agrees, and the word booms like thunder in her ears.

Pride and morals separated them for half a lifetime, but such things always wither with the passage of time, until only love and regret remain. Two sides of the same coin, neither could be whole without the other. And when she finally sleeps the long sleep at last, he follows not long after.

For she was his only dream, and she would haunt him an eternity, if only to see his face.


End file.
